


Don't be a Stranger

by allislaughter



Series: My Only Sin is I Can't Win [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Eldritch, Enemies to Lovers, Fallout Video Game References, M/M, No Sex, POV Third Person, Present Tense, Tentacles, zalgo text
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:27:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24890818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allislaughter/pseuds/allislaughter
Summary: It's a late night in the Valentine Detective Agency after yet another instance of the Mysterious Stranger getting away. Nick finds an old anecdote he has recorded that could potentially give him insight to this strange man... But is he really supposed to believe that the Stranger is some sort of "eldritch entity"?
Relationships: Mysterious Stranger/Nick Valentine
Series: My Only Sin is I Can't Win [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1934476
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	Don't be a Stranger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DireDigression](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DireDigression/gifts), [Glowstickia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glowstickia/gifts).



Another day, another chance for the Stranger to slip away before they could catch that lunatic. A mysterious man met only under mysterious circumstances. With a musical sting and a one-shot death about to happen. Nick’s spent some sleepless nights pouring over any scrap of evidence he could get about the Stranger. Too many nights, according to some. It’s bordering on obsession, but there has to be _something_ he can use to track down the Stranger.

Nick reviews anecdote after anecdote. It’s always the same. The man shows up without a word and with only a few notes to herald his appearance. He shoots someone. He leaves. It’s the same every time, across the lands and across the years. There’s nothing to go on and his best bet is to catch him in the act and stop him before he leaves.

Of course, today’s fight that the Stranger intervened on could have gone south otherwise. Nick had been stuck with a busted leg while he and Sole were trying to fight off super mutants. They were down to the last one, their last bullets and wits, and then that chime. That _man._ Showing up and leaving before Nick could even repair his leg and give chase.

It’s infuriating. Even when the Stranger saves their lives, he runs as if he knows he’s a wanted man.

Sole had dropped Nick off at the office after, and Ellie made him promise to take it easy. Of course, that merely means Nick will sit in bed, coat, hat, and tie off and shirt half unbuttoned, with a stack full of files next to him for him to read for anything he can use to take the Stranger down. Old, old files he’s collected over the years, taking up their own drawer in one of the filing cabinets. Every single one of them the same...

Well, most of them.

One file, some rumors and half-baked theories from someone out in the Capital Wasteland. The ramblings of someone mad, that the Stranger is a “Guardian Angel”. An “eldritch entity”. One that will come to your aid when you’re about to die. One that is more likely to show up if you pray to him first.

One that’s named “Farmer” of all things.

Nick sighs. “Well,” he says to the empty air. “I haven’t said a prayer in years. But if you’re out there, Farmer? Honestly, damn you for giving me the slip for all these years. You want to prove you’re an angel, then you show up right now and convince me.”

He waits a few seconds... No musical sting, just the creaking of the building settling and his own parts shifting. He lets out a vocal approximation to a sigh and gathers up his files to bring them back to the other room to put away.

No sooner than he pushes the squeaky drawer closed does he hear it: that damn musical sting.

He runs back to his room, expecting to find it empty, just a moment too late once again. But instead he sees a man. _His_ man. The one he’s been after for so long. Anger wells from the deepest parts of him and he shouts out a “You!”

The Stranger gives him a look, or so he guesses with his eyes shaded under his hat, and he holds out his arms as if to say “you called me here.” He cocks his head as if to ask “now what do you plan to do?”

Nick... realizes he doesn’t have a plan. His gun is in his “other pocket” and he can’t risk turning his back on the Stranger the one time he didn’t immediately shoot and run.

Come to think of it— 

“How the—” Nick recoils. “How the _hell_ did you get in here?”

The Stranger stares but says nothing. How does he get anywhere, really? Unless...

Nick frowns and takes a cautious step forward. “Wait... You’re not _actually_ some sort of eldritch monster, are you?”

The Stranger frowns.

Nick flinches— tries to hide that he did. “Well, okay, maybe ‘monster’ is a harsh word. Some kind of eldritch _being._ You’re telling me you actually have supernatural powers and you’re using it to kill people?”

The Stranger stares.

No, no, this is all some sort of mind game. Nick scowls, regretting not having any sort of weapon on him. “Talk, damn you! Don’t just stand there saying nothing! Who are you really?”

_“F̵͔̮̝͌ẵ̵͕ȓ̸̦́m̷̡̤̆̔e̸̝r̴̯̐.”_

Just the one word makes Nick’s head spin and vision fry for a split second. He can’t even tell if “Farmer” actually moved his lips. He staggers like a drunk and something catches him by the arm and pulls him upright again. Nick’s vision comes to and he looks to exactly what grabbed him.

...Some sort of. Inky tentacle?

“What?” he asks, startling when the tentacle—damn if that’s not weird to think—uncoils from his arm and snakes back under Farmer’s coat. He stares at Farmer, mind slow to process exactly what he just saw. _“What?!”_ he demands, anger rising from the deepest parts of him. “You’re _kidding!_ I have to have some sort of virus or— or coding malfunction. Maybe I haven’t run diagnostics recently enough. You _can’t_ be an eldritch being.” He groans and slumps against the wall. “I can’t stop an eldritch being.”

Farmer tilts his head again. A more curious look. Something that reads a careful “would you like to see why I do as I do...?”

Nick glares up at him. “And have your sick and twisted fantasies in my mind? No thanks.”

“They are not my fantasies” says the dull expression back at him. “I will ask one more time.”

...This is probably the only chance Nick will ever have to get as much info from this man as possible. Nick hesitates but then nods and steps forward. “Alright, but you better not muck up anything in my mind more than it already is.”

“That is up to you.” Farmer motions for Nick to sit on the bed. “This will be invasive. Ask to stop if you are uncomfortable.”

“I bet you wooed many women with that line,” Nick huffs up, but he sits down anyway. “Well...?”

The front of Farmer’s coat comes undone. More of the inky tendrils snake out, and Nick stiffens as they latch onto him, around his good arm and dipping into the spaces and crevices of his exposed arm.

“Oh, when you said invasive—” Nick mimics a throat clearing sound. “Not the weirdest thing to be done to me, strangely enough... You— You can keep going.” 

Farmer steps closer and closer until he’s immediately in front of Nick. The tentacles seep into Nick’s shirt... And then like rushing water under the gaps of his chest plate. Nick lets out a hiss, hands curling instinctively. Nick can feel the ink looping around his internal components, caressing them with the gentlest of movements, more cooling than coolant, more static-y than electricity...

And in the sensation of touch and tingling like he never felt before as a synth, he can, for a brief moment, see another place and time. Southern California, 2161, a vault dweller looking for a replacement water chip to replace the broken one in Vault 13. The Stranger watching the vault dweller, helping to keep them safe.

The tendrils slide deeper into him, toying with new systems. Nick almost feels dizzy, just before another flash of a vision. 2241, the descendant of that vault dweller. A chosen one trying to save their village and having to stop the Enclave from experimenting on others. Farmer, once again, helping this young soul tasked with something dangerous for the good of others.

 _“Shit,”_ Nick utters as stars fill his eyes from a tendril touching _just_ the right place for a reaction. He grabs onto the tentacles holding his arms, clawing into them as if they’re gel for all they’re solid.

2277, the Capital Wastelands, a young, lone wanderer searching for their missing father. Nick’s heard this story a few times before. Of course the Stranger was there for that too. Of _course._ And then back to the west. 2281, a courier of all things, shot in the head but survived and left to traverse the Mojave Desert in search of their killer. How in the world could the Stranger be there as well?

The tentacles making a nest of his insides jerk, and he spits out curses as he remembers that, right, this man is in no way human. They jerk again, a bit more gentle and kind, and Nick’s voice processor crackles out what could be a moan of delight. His hand goes to his throat instantly, with him thankful he can’t blush.

...2288, the year to come. The sole survivor of Vault 111, who had to go through hell to find a missing child, making a final decision what to do with him and who to side with. A future to come with multiple endings, only made possible by the Stranger’s interference keeping just the right folks alive at just the right time.

What a self-righteous asshole.

Nick feels the tentacles start to let go of his inner components, and he scowls and grabs on tighter to the ones holding his arms. “No, you don’t, you bastard. You be a gentleman and finish what you started.”

The Stranger answers with silence, but the ink answers for him diving further in and slithering in and around with slow, deliberate ease. No more visions this time, leaving Nick to fully enjoy the sensations. Coolness and sparks, the heat of his systems working overtime to keep up and keep conscious, tingles on every tiny piece of him, many of which he never even knew he had.

If he weren’t already so many years a mess, this would definitely void his warranty.

But it’s the best damn feeling he’s had in those many years. Feelings he didn’t know he was capable of. The feeling of pleasure, the frankly bizarre erotic thrill he will never admit this gives him... the feeling that he’s _finally_ caught the Stranger and has gotten a motive, as stupid as haughty as it is, for what he does.

There’s only so much farther he can go and— 

_“God damn,”_ Nick hisses, shocks running up his back and making him shudder around the tendrils filling his chassis. He nearly falls back but manages to support himself in time. The shocks rise up to his head, his vision fritzing and the buzz of bliss taking over almost like a drug-induced high. 

He rides it out to the end, feeling the tentacles slowly unravel inside him and slip out the way they came. He shuts his eyes and rubs them, trying to will his vision back online. “Well,” he says. “I definitely need a smoke after that. What about—?”

He looks up, vision clear, to find an empty room with no sign his “guest” was ever there. As if Nick could have dreamt the whole thing and no one would be the wiser.

Nick stares at the empty air for a few seconds, mind slow to process in the aftermath of what ranks high in the weirdest “one-night stands” he ever had... And then it clicks: the Mysterious Stranger got away.

“God DAMMIT!”

**Author's Note:**

> This was entirely based on the quote at the top of the Mysterious Stranger (character) page on the Fallout wikia:
> 
> "You have a Guardian Angel, but with a deadly hand-cannon instead of wings. Meet the Mysterious Stranger, AKA real name- Farmer. An odd and eldritch entity said to appear and aid you in combat before you draw your dying breath. Of course, it helps if you have said a prayer to Farmer first." — Fallout 3 Official Game Guide


End file.
